Our second reading today was from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. The lectionary provides a series from this letter, from the 7th to the 14th Sundays in Year B. In the section quoted from today, which occupies two whole Chapters...

I, Paul have been entrusted with the grace of proclaiming to the pagans the infinite treasure of Christ (Eph 3:8 - JB translation). In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul sets himself to unfold for us the mystery of Christ. In Christ, Paul cries, God’s eternal plan...

When Jesus in St. John’s Gospel says “I am”, he implicitly evokes the name of God, as revealed to Moses, and thereby claims divine status. He does this not out of self exaltation, but as a revelation of the truth, entirely for...

This is what Christ said, on coming into the world... God, here I am! I am coming to obey your will. We are celebrating the Solemnity of the Annunciation, just a few days before Palm Sunday and Holy Week. Just before entering into the mystery... 

Sir, we should like to see Jesus (Jn 12:21). “Of course we don’t mean we want to see him merely as one of the crowd; merely externally. What we should like, with your help, is to contemplate...

Some years before the Caldey conversion, Abbot Aelred Carlyle wrote his essay Our Purpose and Method. In that he passes on advice he himself once received: “Paint your picture in strong colours, keep it ever before you...

The Collect or Opening Prayer of today’s Mass is the one given in the Gelasian Sacramentary for the First Sunday of Lent. The Gelasian Sacramentary is a collection of Mass prayers, compiled some time around the...

Oh come to the water, all you who are thirsty! (Is 55:1) Water is such a commonplace element! It falls abundantly out of the sky; it rises up from the ground; it surrounds us in the sea; it fills our rivers and lakes; just now it clothes our landscape with a coverlet of snow: and all...